Unique Staffing Niche – Bilingual Nurses

PRN Funding has written a number of blogs/articles touting Dr. Linda Aiken’s studies on how supplemental staffing agencies can help solve the overall nurse shortage problem.  However, we recently read about a very specific niche in temporary nurse staffing–staffing nurses who are bilingual, especially in Spanish.

In the state of Delaware, where the spanish-speaking population has doubled in the past seven years, bilingual nurses are in high demand.  According to an article on DelawareOnline.com, there is a very real fear that “that with few Spanish-speaking health care workers, those who speak Spanish only, or little English, will be less likely to seek medical treatment.”

Proponents of training and hiring bilingual nurses think that having these specific nurses on staff at key medical facilities will help the immigrants improve their overall health as well as understand the American health care system better.

If you ask the temporary nurse staffing factoring specialists at PRN Funding, staffing bilingual nurses sounds like a unique opportunity that agency owners should think about exploring.

Click here to read the entire article: State needs nurses who speak Spanish.

Healthcare Staffing Firm Buying Up Hospitals

Jackson Hospital Affiliates is the new brainchild of Jackson Healthcare, a healthcare staffing agency based in Alpharetta, GA.  The Jackson Hospital Affiliates division of the company was opened as a new initiative for aquiring and operating hospitals, according to Staffing Industry Analyst’s Daily News.

“We feel we have the resources and management expertise ‘to make a difference’ in the quality and delivery of healthcare in the communities served by our hospitals,” said Richard Jackson, chairman and CEO of Jackson Healthcare.

Temp Nurses are More Qualified

Professor Linda Aiken is back with a new study debunking the myth that temporary nurses are underqualified compared to their full-time hospital counterparts.  She delivered the results of her study last month at the Staffing Industry Analysts Inc.’s Healthcare Staffing Summit, held in San Francisco.

As reported by the Staffing Industry Analyst’s e-newsletter, “according to Aiken, 75% of hospitals participating in a study said they use supplemental nurses. Still doubts over the quality of these nurses persist. Aiken’s study shows that on average supplemental nurses are more qualified and the majority of them work in primary jobs in hospitals. They are also more likely to be specialty certified.

Despite the negative attitude, continued shortage of nurses and physicians bodes well for the healthcare staffing industry. The shortage of registered nurses in the U.S. is estimated to reach 800,000 by 2020. The physician shortage is estimated at 250,000 by 2025. Moreover, Aiken added that 30% of nurses say they are burned out and are dissatisfied with their jobs. They seek employment with staffing firms to control their schedules and to earn better wages and get supplemental income.”

Five Ways for Business Owners to Control Their Cash

A business simply cannot operate without a healthy cash flow, but credit crunches and tight lending regulations from banks can make it difficult for today’s business owner to maintain a steady cash flow.  Elizabeth Wilson of Entrepreneur.com shared five ways for business owners to reduce their vulnerability:

1. Diversify your revenue stream. Staffing temp nurses in only one large nursing home or transcribing for only one big hospital is not ideal because if your only customer starts extending its payments, it will affect your cash flow immensely.  If you spread out your work among a couple of different clients, you will stand a better chance of balancing your cash flow if one of them starts to pay slower.  In other words, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.

2. Cut back excess spending and protect your cash flow to meet payments. Stay on top of spending and collections patterns to be sure that the amount of cash coming in balances the amount that needs to go out.

3. Cut costs whenever possible. Work to negotiate better terms with the healthcare providers you are servicing.  Oftentimes, doctors offices are willing to make credit card payments as well.

4. Raise capital in innovative ways other than traditional banking. Healthcare vendors can and should take advantage of accounts receivable factoring to help them maintain a positive cash flow.  Selling their invoices to a factor provides cash immediately so business owners can make payroll and meet other financial obligations without having to wait to be paid.

5. If you have excess cash, you should be leveraging it. “If banks are tightening up their credit, use it to borrow what you need as collateral, and have it in capital investments you need to grow the busienss.  Having it in cash is useless unless you have disbursements on an ongoing basis,” founder of BUZGate, Deborah Osgood said.

2008 National Staffing Employee Week

This year the National Staffing Employee Week will be celebrated  September 15-21.  All across America, temporary medical staffing companies will join the rest of the nation’s supplemental staffing agencies in recognizing the contributions of America’s temporary and contract employees.

The American Staffing Association’s Web site offers a number of different ways to celebrate National Staffing Employee Week, including client thank-you stuffers, employee thank-you stuffers and recognition certificates for your temporary healthcare employees.

The ASA site also offers suggestions on how to spread the word in your community and local media outlets.

Click here for more information on the 2008 National Staffing Week or contact:

Reem El-Khatib
Public Relations Coordinator
703-253-2047
relkhatib@americanstaffing.net

Southern Florida hit hardest in RN shortage

The Florida Center for Nursing published a report last month showing that Southern Florida is among the hardest hit when it comes to the national nurse shortage.  Currently, 16 percent of registered nurse jobs are vacant in the Florida-area, and the shortfall is projected to climb rapidly over the next decade.

Research director at the Florida Center for Nursing said these southern Florida facilities will rely heavily on shifting duties to nurses aides and hiring additional temporary nurses to help alleviate the problem.

Read the article: State nursing shortage needs urgent attention, group says in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com for more information. (NOTE: The original article is no longer available online.)

Landing a Business Loan After Bankruptcy

Who does a business owner turn to for financing when he/she has been  turned down for business loans due to a personal bankruptcy?

Business Week columnist, Karen Klein, tackled this question earlier this month (Landing a Business Loan After Bankruptcy).  Noting that it’s hard for entrepreneurs to get startup capital in general, Klein said it’s even harder to get bank financing now because banks have tightened their lending standards.

Although Klein suggested asking friends, family and/or other strategic investors to put a monetary interest in the new business, she also recommended accounts receivable factoring.  PRN Funding couldn’t agree more with this advice!

For nine years, PRN Funding has been able to provide  healthcare staffing funding, medical transcription invoice factoring, and medical coding accounts receivable financing to numerous clients who have had less-than-perfect credit.  These healthcare vendor clients know that PRN Funding extends credit based on their customers’ ability to pay, rather than the business owner’s personal credit.

Check out some of PRN Funding’s client success stories to see just how PRN Funding’s accounts receivable factoring program was able to help.

Adams, Evens & Ross makes Inc. 500 List of Fastest Growing Companies

PRN Funding was excited to find out that Adams, Evens & Ross (AER), was recently added to Inc’s 500 List of Fastest-Growing Private Companies.  Ranked number 307 on the list, AER is a company who collects and manages past-due accounts for clients in the staffing and recruiting industry.  Adams, Evens & Ross boasts a 914.6% three-year growth and revenues of $4.3 million.

PRN Funding outsources some of its ultra-slow paying accounts to AER, and we’ve been pleased with their work, so we wanted to share this exciting news with our Factoring Blog readers.

Linda Aiken to Speak at Healthcare Staffing Summit

Associates of PRN Funding can still remember the first time they heard Professor Linda Aiken speak when she was a guest presenter at Staffing World 2004 in Washington DC.  We were blown away by the amount of information Professor Aiken had to say about how temporary nurse staffing agencies can help defeat the nurse shortage.

Now professor Aiken is scheduled to speak at the 2008 Healthcare Staffing Summit about her most recent project, which involved research on more than 40,000 nurses in 900 hospitals, including travel nurses and per diem nurses.  She will also discuss another one of her studies that found temporary nurses are just as qualified as traditionally employed nurses.

For those medical staffing agency owners who will be attending this year’s conference, don’t miss this talk!

Connecticut’s Nurse Shortage Could Become Crisis

Nurses, nursing school instructors and others in the nursing field in Connecticut (CT) are waiting to hear if a proposed $185,000 federal grant will be approved for the Connecticut State University System’s nursing programs, an Associated Press article announced earlier this week.

If approved, the money would be used to add seats to nursing programs at Central, Western, Southern and Eastern Connecticut state universities to combat the state-wide nurse shortage.  In addition, the money would help fund programs for more graduate training opportunities, scholarships and equipment.

Click here to read the story in the Hartford Courant: Officials: Nursing shortage could become crisis.